After Political divorce, Livni's party falls short

Ahead of the upcoming April elections, Israelis face a wave of new political parties running for Knesset.

By GIL HOFFMAN
Updated: JANUARY 3, 2019 02:56
Elections 2019: Who will Israel choose? (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Elections 2019: Who will Israel choose?
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
They say that in a divorce, there are no winners, and that was proven in the first polls that came out a day after Labor leader Avi Gabbay broke up with his Zionist Union partner, Hatnua head Tzipi Livni, on live television.
A TNS poll taken for Channel 1 on Tuesday and Wednesday found that Hatnua would not even cross the 3.25% electoral threshold. Labor under Gabbay would win only seven seats in the April 9 election, two less than the nine predicted in a poll by the same poll taken on Sunday.
A Midgam survey taken for the news channel predicted five seats for Livni’s party and eight for Gabbay’s, far less than the 24 the Zionist Union won in the 2015 election. Midgam also predicted nine seats for the Zionist Union on Sunday.
Gabbay’s associates said he ordered polls ahead of his decision to end the partnership after he found that Labor would win the same with or without Livni. They said he made his decision because her electoral support did not justify the reserved slots her and her allies had on the Zionist Union list.
A source in Hatnua mocked Gabbay, saying that the Labor leader had revealed a poll taken two weeks ago that predicted 15 seats for the Zionist Union.
The TNS poll was taken among a group of 543 people representing a statistical sample of the adult Israeli population. The Midgam poll was taken among 515 Israelis and had a 4.4% margin of error.
Regarding the new Hayemin Hehadash Party formed on Saturday night by former Bayit Yehudi leaders Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett, the polls continued to be inconclusive.
In the TNS poll, the new party fell from 14 seats to nine since Sunday, even though Bayit Yehudi would not cross the electoral threshold. Bennett and Shaked’s party remained at six seats in the Midgam poll and Bayit Yehudi remained at four.
Three other polls taken on Sunday predicted anywhere between eight and 14 seats for Hayemin Hehadash. The impact of the addition of The Jerusalem Post senior contributing editor Caroline Glick to the new party has not yet been measured.